If I Should Fall
by Gary Merchant
Summary: In the aftermath of Operation Golden Age, Mike Yates faces life as a civilian.


IF I SHOULD FALL . . .  
  
He woke up with a dull ache in his shoulder, a minor ache that would soon fade. But an even deeper pain festered inside him - psychological rather than physical. Raising himself to a sitting position, he was not surprised to find himself inside a detention cell.  
  
A guard stood watching outside. He called out. "Sir, he's awake!"  
  
The sound of footsteps could be heard coming ever closer. When they stopped outside the cell its occupant recognised the man next to the guard. "I might have expected it would be you."  
  
Sergeant Benton unlocked the cell door. "Come along, sir. The Brigadier wants a word."  
  
With a shrug, Mike Yates followed Benton out of the cell, wondering what the future held for him.  
  
*****  
  
"So, what have you got to say for yourself?"  
  
Yates sat facing the Brigadier, not immediately sure how to answer the question. Yes, he felt guilty about his actions - some might say he had betrayed his colleagues - even so . . .  
  
"Perhaps I was wrong in the way I conducted myself," he replied, "but I still believe that the end result would have been right."  
  
"The end result?" The Brigadier had a look of thunder about him. "Yates, you could have been responsible for ending life on this planet!"  
  
"It wasn't like that, sir, " Yates insisted. "Sir Charles Grover had a dream . . ."  
  
Lethbridge Stewart regarded his former Captain with frustration. How could he make him understand? He leaned forward in his chair. "Tell me about this dream. How exactly was it supposed to come about?"  
  
Yates offered a half smile. "We were all going back into a Golden Age. You must have seen the time travel equipment Professor Whitaker devised? He was going to use that to deliver us all to a more peaceful time. No wars, no conflict. Just peace."  
  
"I see." Lethbridge Stewart's face was impassive. "And can you explain to me just how we were all to be transported? I mean all of us, the whole world."  
  
"Well, I don't know," he admitted. "I only saw the one machine."  
  
"And that's all there was, Yates." The Brigadier read the report in front of him. "We undertook a full scale search of London and the Home Counties. We left nothing to chance. There were no other transmat machines in operation anywhere. Nothing."  
  
Yates shook his head. "That's not possible," he protested. "Whitaker said that Grover's plan would encompass the world."  
  
"There's something else." The Brigadier produced a number of photographs from the folder. "Take a look a these."  
  
They were pictures of the interior of the fake space rocket where Sarah Jane Smith had become an unwilling passenger. Yates studied the photos in detail. But they meant nothing to him. "I don't understand."  
  
"Sir Charles Grover had duped a selected number of people, convincing them that Earth had perished and they were undertaking a long journey through space to a new Earth. But with the help of Whitaker's equipment, their new Earth would have been our past."  
  
"So he lied to them." Yates tried to brazen it out, but now he was beginning to lose the courage of his convictions. "Perhaps he was right."  
  
"Open your eyes, man!" Lethbridge Stewart exclaimed. "If Grover had managed to succeed, those volunteers would have been the only survivors of this supposed Golden Age. There would have been nothing else left!"  
  
Mike Yates couldn't quite take it all in. Had Grover's vision of the future been a total lie? If he accepted the Brigadier's words, then it had to be so. But he had so wanted to believe, and now his dreams lay in tatters. He now began to appreciate just how far he had fallen. "Sir, I . . . are you absolutely sure?"  
  
Lethbridge Stewart took no pleasure in this. Mike Yates had been a good officer, one of the best. To see him now, a shadow of his former self, was something he would not wish on anyone. "I'm afraid so, Mike. You were well and truly taken in." He thought for a moment. "Do you recall the Sea Devil incident?"  
  
The change of subject threw him. "Er, yes. Something to do with the Master, wasn't it?"  
  
The Brigadier nodded. "He was directing operations while locked in prison. Apparently the governor, Trenchard, allowed him open access, providing him with anything he wanted."  
  
"Hypnotism?" Yates suggested.  
  
"No, not exactly," the Brigadier replied. "The Master latched onto Trenchard's sense of honour and duty, but twisted it to his own designs. It seems to me, " he suggested, "that that's what happened to you. You hadn't fully recovered from that spot of bother at Global Chemicals, as I recall."  
  
"I was given a clean bill of health."  
  
"Physically, yes. But mentally you'd gone through a lot. Possibly Grover saw an opportunity to exploit a possible weakness. I'm sure the Doctor could explain all this far better than I can."  
  
"Don't worry, sir. You're doing alright." The words tumbled out before Yates could stop them.  
  
Lethbridge Stewart seemed not to notice. "Thank you for the compliment," he noted, totally straight faced.  
  
Mike was now apprehensive, to say the least. "So, what happens now, sir?"  
  
The Brigadier sighed. "Well, the Doctor suggested I should be lenient, though I'm less inclined to agree, given the severity of the situation at the time . . . "  
  
"Sir," Yates stood up. "Permission to speak freely."  
  
"Go on."  
  
"I know I let everyone down; I almost got the Doctor killed through my own misguided loyalties, but it was never my intention for anyone to suffer. I was a fool, I can see that now. And I accept that any military court would find me guilty and see me discharged from the army. It's no better than I deserve. I can only apologise for the trouble I caused, and be prepared to accept any punishment you think fit."  
  
The Brigadier motioned for Yates to return to his seat. "Your honesty does you credit," he said, after a moment, "and will be taken into account. In the meantime, I suggest you take some time off. I believe you have some leave due?"  
  
"Well, yes sir, but . . . "  
  
Lethbridge Stewart's voice was insistent but calm. "Captain Yates, while under my command you are still a serving officer of UNIT. I presume you still recognise an order from a superior officer?"  
  
"Yes, sir," Mike answered, though he wasn't quite he was following this sudden turn of events.  
  
The Brigadier sat forward in his chair. "So take a few days off; the inquiry isn't until next week." And with the Brigadier's next words, Mike realised he was being offered a tenuous lifeline. "Mike, I've put my neck on the block for you many times. But this time things have gone too far. I'll do my best for you, but I can't make any promises."  
  
*****  
  
Mike Yates, civilian. The fact didn't sit comfortably with him, but he could hardly have expected anything less. The findings of the inquiry saw him discharged, but his previously unblemished record had counted in his favour. That, and a fair amount of string pulling by the Brigadier.  
  
Not that the monetary side of things worried him unduly. Mike had come from a well to do family, and the manor cottage his parents had left him was testament to that. Initially it was there he had retreated to lick his wounds.  
  
No, it was the fact that he could never return to the life he knew. Though Lethbridge Stewart had put forward a strong case in his favour, the inquiry had agreed that Mike Yates could no longer remain a serving officer at UNIT. None of the other armed forces would touch him. And while a court marshal had been narrowly avoided, the stigma remained.  
  
And he missed the people at UNIT, many of whom he could have counted as friends - Benton, Carol Bell, Osgood and even the Brigadier, to a certain extent. Now, Mike wasn't sure what any of them thought of him and he had been far too reluctant to approach them since his dismissal. But he was glad that at least one person was, so far, ignorant of his wrongdoings.  
  
Mike wasn't sure how he could have faced Jo Grant, knowing her as he did. At least she was far away from this; up the Amazon with Clifford Jones, her husband.  
  
That had been hard to accept. Admittedly, though they had gone out together on a handful of occasions, the chance to develop the affection he held for her into a more serious relationship never came up - the day to day life at UNIT had put paid to that. Then came the trouble at Global Chemicals, and she had been swept away from him in an instant. He thought he had hid his disappointment well, until he caught a look from her, which said 'I'm sorry.' And that look had hurt him more than he dared to admit.  
  
Mike could see it all now. The pain of rejection, coupled with a deep hypnosis broken via the properties of the blue crystal from Metabelis III, had indeed left him in a vulnerable state. And it was during a period of leave, not long after, that Sir Charles Grover had approached him with a proposition.  
  
Thankfully, that episode in his life was now behind him. And with the burden of the last few months lifted from his shoulders, Mike felt he could at last relax. Having found an isolated place to stay away from all the attention, he finally had the time needed to sort himself out.  
  
They were certainly an odd bunch, he observed of his fellow boarders. But then, it takes all sorts to make a world - and as Mike would reflect later, just a handful of people to destroy it.  
  
*****  
  
The Brigadier was supervising the clean up operation at the Buddhist retreat. Those who had been victims of a form of mind control would now require specialist help to recover. On the other hand, one of the staff, Tommy, seemed fine. It was Sarah Jane Smith who insisted he be found a place at a top university. The strangest thing was the disappearance of the people in charge of the place - K'anpo and Cho-je. Sarah had tried to explain, but the Brigadier had long since accepted that anything involving the Doctor didn't guarantee any simple answers.  
  
So he shouldn't have been too surprised to find Mike Yates as a resident of the place. He found him sat at the foot of the stairs. "Well, this is a fine mess."  
  
Mike looked up. "Yes, I suppose so," he agreed. "Care to take the weight off, sir?"  
  
The Brigadier smiled. "Don't mind if I do, Yates." He joined his former Captain on the stairs. "What with one thing and another, it's been a trying day."  
  
"That, sir, is an understatement," Mike remarked. "You don't know the half of it."  
  
"No, probably not," the Brigadier conceded. "So, how are you, Mike?"  
  
"Pretty well, considering," he replied. "It's not every day one gets hit by a bolt of alien energy and lives to tell the tale."  
  
"Yes, I heard about that from Miss Smith. No injuries?"  
  
"Not even a mark, sir." Mike had been examined earlier by Dr Sullivan, and been pronounced A1. "Cho-je said I survived because my heart was pure."  
  
"Quite." The Brigadier had his doubts about such mumbo-jumbo, but after the Doctor's ESP experiments, and now the events here, he was willing to be open minded about the whole thing. If invasions from space were possible, then why not this? "So, any word on the Doctor?" Mike hesitated. "Well?"  
  
"He's gone, sir."  
  
"Well, I know that! Gone where?"  
  
"It's all connected with that blue crystal he found some time ago," Mike began. "Apparently someone wanted it back, so the Doctor had to return to the planet it came from. The way Sarah explained it, he had to go and face his greatest fear."  
  
"Good Lord . . . but he's been in some tight spots before," the Brigadier insisted. "This won't be any different." But he didn't feel confident in his words.  
  
"I hope you're right, sir." The two men fell silent, neither wanting to accept the possibility that the Doctor might not return this time. The clean up operation continued around them, but they barely noticed.  
  
The Brigadier was the first to rouse himself. "Come on, Mike. I could do with a pint."  
  
"On duty, sir?" Mike's tone was slightly mocking.  
  
"UNIT can manage perfectly well without me for an hour," Lethbridge Stewart declared. "We passed a little place on the way here." He strode off, then turned. "Are you coming, Captain?"  
  
Mike shrugged, then hurried outside to join him. As they arrived either side of the Brigadier's staff car, he realised. "Sir, did you just call me 'Captain?'"  
  
The Brigadier's face was one of complete innocence. "Must have been a slip of the tongue." But there was the merest hint of a smile. They were inside the car and on their way before Mike could think of a suitable rejoinder. But then he let it pass.  
  
Once again, Mike Yates was left wondering what the future held for him. 


End file.
